Burning books

One of the things you learn in NLP or Neuro-Semantics now is how to take control of your mental frames and thoughts. Frames are what enable us to move throughout the world and to make sense of what’s happening, aka your state of mind.

You know how some people seem to be able to accept everything that happens to them with an open heart and mind? It comes with having a frame of mind that’s open and respectful of whatever’s happening around that person. A beautiful frame, right?

One of the newsletters I get in my email is the Neurons reflections by Michael Hall. I usually give them a skip because I don’t have the time to read them (it almost always seems to come in when I’m too tired to think or at work), but today’s one made me stop and think.

Today’s newsletter was about the burning of the Quran in Afghanistan. Based on what I read, basically the soldiers there were stupid enough had burnt some Quran, and there were now riots in Afghanistan because of that.

Michael Hall’s conclusion was that the issue laid in the intolerance frame people had. Basically it is the frame that believes your own understanding of reality is absolute, and anything that contradicts or threatens that is something to be destroyed. His exact words were:

The cause is the kind of thinking and mental framing that sees something one does not like, approve, and believe in as something that gives me the right to violently hurt and punish another person.

Note: Me in this case refers to the hypothetical belief of the person and not Michael Hall himself.

What is missing from such a frame is usually the element of respect. It is the problem of forcing others to conform to our beliefs instead of respecting them. In that respect, it sounds a lot like a laissez-faire view; let others believe what they want to believe until it steps on others.

Which I think, is the right way to view things. And perhaps the best way to handle religion. Let a person do what they want to do unless it harms themselves or others. For me, the easiest and biggest indicator of harm is physical harm done to a person. That’s the point you step in to offer help and if necessary, intervene.

There are a few other points that are just as contentious, but I’ll stop for now cause the battery on Rydeen is running just *that* bit low.:P

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One thought on “Burning books”

I don’t think the Quran-burning incident had anything to do with religious absolutes at all. Whether one burns the Quran or not has absolutely no grounding in any form of religious doctrine I am aware of.

So I don’t think it’s a matter of ‘religious intolerance’. Imho it’s more likely that it’s a bunch of soldiers in the desert acting like jerks, and people can act like jerks in any particular instance, for any particular motivation. In this case, it’s more likely that the soldiers thought it’d be a good way of humiliating their enemy. Pretty darn stupid I’d say.